On Friday I presented at the RecruitTech Conference in Canberra, Australia and had the opportunity to talk about Blogging from a Recruitment Perspective and go through some of the success/challenges that I have had using our Oracle Recruitment Blog. On one hand I enjoyed demonstrating some of the successes and challenges using a blog because social media is something I am passionate about - I think the positive impact it has had on business and personal lives far outweigh the perceived negative impacts.

From another angle though, looking at the presenter list for this conference I was thinking before I stood up to speak, am I the best person to really demonstrate this?? Many of the other presenters at this conference have been blogging far longer than I have (I am a relatively new blogger - about 18 months) and have covered many topics I have not even touched.

While I recognise with the Oracle Recruitment Blog, the platform is not new and blogging itself is not new, I think the content that we have shared has been refreshing and has helped us add some real value to our community of readers. Content really is king - if a blog creates something that is interesting to people, they will read it and share it with their friends and connections. I will share my RecruitTech presentation online shortly either on my slideshare account or on the Oracle Recruitment Blog, I think presentation may be available on YouTube shortly as well.

As a wrap-up it was a great day and there was some very good presentations focused around the use (lack of use ) of Social Media in the Recruitment space. What makes a good Recruiter has not changed - a Recruiter who can add value to both a candidate and a client and is able to establish and develop strong relationships will be successful. What has changed is the tools that we use to make these things happen. Where once candidates relied on mail (no, not email good old fashioned snail mail remember that) to send in their resumes - now they let people view their profiles on LinkedIn or Plaxo. Where once a candidate used to fax their details to a company, now that same candidate waits for the company to contact them on one of their social networks or keyword search them. I do not think that Social Media tools are being used as effectively as they could be in the recruitment space (in general) yet, however as we see social media tools get further ingrained into our daily and corporate lives we will see more effective use of the technology by clients and candidates alike.

P.S. - thanks to the guys from GradConnection for the TwitPic, it was great meeting you finally. This blog entry is also available at David's Journal on Tap